The Political Calculus of a Top-Level Takedown in China

The Communist Party’s ousting this week of three associates of former security czar Zhou Yongkang seems to be another signal that the political noose is tightening around the retired leader’s neck.

Zhou Yongkang, who was once one of the Communist Party’s nine most powerful officials, hasn’t been publicly accused of any criminal wrongdoing. But whether he broke any laws may be beside the point. Zhou’s purported support for Bo Xilai, the jailed former Party secretary of Chongqing and perceived challenger to President Xi Jinping, is enough to make him a political target.

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Zhou Yongkang

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On Wednesday, the Party announced that it was expelling three senior officials: Ji Wenlin, a former secretary to Zhou; Tan Hong, an official who worked in the public security bureau, which was once run by Zhou; and Yu Gang, a former deputy director of the Party’s Central Politics and Law Commission, also formerly run by Mr. Zhou. All three were kicked out on suspicion of bribery. In the vast majority of cases, expulsion from the Party is a prelude to criminal prosecution.

Whatever the connection between Zhou and his fallen comrades, the indictments this week have further fired speculation that Zhou himself is close to being called formally to account for his conduct.

But will he? That’s hardly a foregone conclusion.

On the one hand, there have been hints from Xi and the Chinese media that Zhou could be taken down. Xi has emphasized that his anti-corruption crusade is aimed at “taking down tigers and flies” – in other words, that even the well-connected are not untouchable. As a front-page editorial in Tuesday’s edition of the Communist party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily intoned (in Chinese), “No matter who, no matter how high the status or authority, those who in the end have violated state law and party discipline, will receive no mercy.”

Yet taking out a figure as powerful as Zhou could have serious consequences. No former leader of his stature has been criminally prosecuted since the Gang of Four trial that signaled the end of the Cultural Revolution. In a leadership system still governed by consensus, publicly tarring Zhou would require Xi to spend vast amounts of political capital – capital he needs to push through reforms he believes necessary to ensure the Party’s long-term legitimacy.

There is precedent for letting fallen political luminaries live out their retirement quietly. Following the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square, purged Party chief Zhao Ziyang, a reformer who had argued for dialogue with the demonstrators, was spared prison and public humiliation, instead spending the rest of his life under virtual house arrest. With Zhou’s political network in ruins, Xi could easily follow a similar script and spare himself and his allies some grief.

In the end, Xi appears more likely to take the riskier approach of directly going after Zhou – not because he wants to purge an adversary, but because he has a larger project in mind.

To do that, the Party needs to cut ties with the blunt, truncheon-swinging politics that prevailed when Zhou served as the Party’s enforcer.

Maintaining stability is acknowledged to be as crucial as before, but now it needs to be done with nuance. Dissenters who attempt to organize against Party rule will be dealt with severely. But dialogue with those disaffected locally is essential.

Assaulting Zhou’s network may have neutered him politically. But what Xi is pushing for is a break with a politics that pushes the Party forward, rather than merely holding it together. And to do that, he needs to openly confront Zhou himself.

There’s no guarantee that Xi’s strategy will work–if only because upsetting the old order could engender even more resistance than he already faces from those who’ve benefited from the status quo. But there are clear signs that a new political scaffold is being erected in China, and it’s built for more than just dealing with one increasingly lone man.

Russell Leigh Moses is the Dean of Academics and Faculty at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies. He is writing a book on the changing role of power in the Chinese political system.

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